This is an electronic edition of the complete book complemented by author biography. *********************. Plain Tales from the Hills (published 1888) is the first collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. Out of its 40 stories, "eight-and-twenty", according to Kipling''s Preface, were initially published in the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, British India, (now in Pakistan) between November 1887 and June 1888. "The remaining tales are, more or less, new." (Kipling had worked as a journalist for the CMG - his first job - since 1882, when he was not quite 20.).